This isn’t Joe Kennedy’s grandfather’s Democratic Party, and he knows it

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2018

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When you’re sitting in front of Rep. Joe Kennedy, it’s clear that you’re sitting in front of a Kennedy. The face, the jawline — it’s all uncannily familiar. But Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, is rising in a changed Democratic Party. In the 1950s, the nonwhite share of the Democratic vote was about 7 percent. In 2012, it was about 44 percent — and that number is ticking upward. Kennedy is navigating it smoothly. Tapped to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union — and you’ll want to listen to him tell the story of how that came about — he delivered a powerful performance in a speaking slot that usually buries ambitious young politicians. And he did it by reminding Democrats that their rhetoric can be bigger than their divisions, that a party built on difference can still see its way to a national identity. In this conversation, Kennedy and I talk about the vision and the policies that lie behind that speech. Where should Democrats go on health care, on economics, on drugs? Is the divide over identity politics and economic populism really a “false choice,” as Kennedy argues? And how do Democrats talk about unity when Trump keeps driving the national conversation into divisive issues? Further Reading: Matt Yglesias' piece on Rep. Kennedy's SOTU response The Ezra Klein Show episode with the authors of How Democracies Die Books: Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So a lot there. Welcome to my podcast. There you go. Thank you. Let me try to get to as much of that as I can.
0:20.1	Hello, welcome to Mr. Klein show on the Box Media podcast network. Who am I?
0:24.0	I am Mr. Klein. You probably guessed it. My guest this week is representative Joe Kennedy,
0:29.0	who you might remember from such state of the Union responses as the 2018 state of the Union
0:33.7	response. This is a speech is usually a graveyard. It is where aspiring, well-liked ambitious
0:40.8	politicians go to disappoint everyone and then get made fun of. But Kennedy speech was pretty
0:45.8	well received. It was an outpouring of interest in yes, a Kennedy. But the reason I think he's
0:52.6	interesting right now is that at a moment when the Democratic Party has been driven by an argument
0:58.0	about whether they should emphasize economic populism or identity, he showed or re-showed the
1:04.4	power of what I would call an Obama-esque message, the Democratic Party, a message about inclusion,
1:08.9	about what America stands for. There was a lot less Trump bashing in him to him than I would have
1:15.5	thought for that state of the Union. But there was quite a resonance with the messages that have
1:20.8	worked for Democrats in the past and that I'd begun to wonder if they would work for this Democratic
1:26.0	Party in the future. But listening to him, I think they might. So this is a conversation where I
1:30.5	wanted to push on all that a little bit. What does it resolve down into? What does that message
1:34.7	of an inclusive America? What does it mean for policy? When he says that we don't have to make choices
1:39.8	between this group or that group, between that approach and this approach, what happens when you
1:44.0	do have to make a choice? What happens when there is something zero or something? What happens when
1:46.9	people perceive a zero-sumness? So this is what I tried to do in the interview to push them a
1:51.7	little bit on this. I found as it answers interesting, we also have a fascinating discussion towards the
1:55.7	end about drug policy. He has taken a harder line on this and many in the Democratic Party and I was
2:00.9	fascinated to hear why. Before we get to Congressman Kennedy, as always, a couple quick asks,
	...

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